


A Quick Rest

by MalthusIndex



Category: UFO: Aftermath
Genre: Biomass, Depressing, Gen, One Shot, Suicide, Transgenants - Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:36:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22913338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalthusIndex/pseuds/MalthusIndex
Summary: Unwilling to keep going in the face of yet another world-ruining threat, one survivor of The Twilight and The Fall just wants to sleep.
Kudos: 1





	A Quick Rest

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a short little one-shot I wanted to make as a "foot in the door" for making more UFO stuff in the future. It's basically just a huge reference to the opening cutscene that shows stuff that's never mentioned again in-game, with a small nod to Jade Star's written fanwork about the series.

Malcom was tired. _Very_ tired. He had lost track of how many days it had been since the Twilight, but it had been fourteen since he had decided to try and count again. It wasn’t like anybody could have really kept track for long under the circumstances, not when they were so horribly unprepared for the end.

There he was, deep in some part of the USA – he didn’t know where at this point, nothing was recognisable anymore – stumbling around and trying to find some kind of safety or shelter. Something. _Anything._ The last safe place he had known of, the old military base that had been repurposed by the makeshift army that were desperately trying to restore hope to the people, had fallen to the spreading biomass two days ago. He didn’t know the details, and he didn’t want to know. He just wanted to sleep.

Each barren street shattered his heart a little more, his strides getting shorter and shorter as his hope of surviving the nightmare dwindled: was there even really a point? Even if they could band together as a species and reverse the Twilight, killing off all the horrible transgenants and their alien creators that were forcibly populating their planet, would there even be enough people left for it to have any meaning?

He already felt uncomfortable looking at the world around him, and he knew that he, personally, wouldn’t be able to live as he was even if they magically solved the problem. Each overturned car he passed could be the home of one of those crab-like creatures that he had watched slice a man in half, and each figure he saw in the distance was interpreted in his brain as an enemy.

He just wanted to sleep…

Stepping through an alleyway into the next street, his 1911A1 raised in both shaking hands, Malcom felt the cold wind of the equally-cold Earth rush through him. He had to remember. He had to save one bullet for himself, he couldn’t do this forever. No matter what he did, he’d become one of them, one of the Morelmen, but he wouldn’t make it convenient for them. They weren’t going to-

_Buzzing._

__An almost… happy buzzing sound, like that of a small bee population in a flowering garden. His father had kept bees in his old age, and for a moment, it almost felt nostalgic. Almost. But these days, whenever you heard a buzz, you knew a Deathbellows was nearby, waiting for somebody to step into its view so that it could unleash its own insectoid parasites onto them. They were disgusting things, like hollowed-out slugs crossed with a beehive.

His heart was pounding in his chest, and it wasn’t just because his body was working overtime to stay awake. He had half a mind to just blow his own head off here – it was better than the alternative.

No. No, there had to be others out there. The biomass had only spread so far, and there was no way that other humans hadn’t fled too. If he could just make it down the street and to the edge of the town…

A loud bang interrupted his train of thought, and Malcom whipped his head around to find the source of the attack. It took a few moments that it was his own gun, which he had fired out of stress without consciously thinking about it.

The buzzing grew louder.

Cursing and refusing to look for the Deathbellows that would inevitably send its swarm after him, he began to sprint, not caring where he was going or where it would take him. There were no other options at this point, and he had nothing to lose other than his miserable existence on this broken planet. He didn’t even think about his movements, relying purely on visual feedback to tell him where he could and couldn’t go. Behind him, a few shots let loose: either other humans or a Morelman who still held onto his gun. He didn’t care to find out which it was.

By the time he felt his brain clear up again, he had already burst his way into an abandoned cinema. He didn’t know which direction he had gone in or what the building was called, but he set about throwing any furniture he had in front of the doors, blocking them up as best he could.

He was just so, so tired.

Once the last chair his body could manage to push was in place, he almost collapsed, the stress of his situation and his untreated injuries starting to get to him. The Twilight had fucking sucked, but it was nothing compared to this.

Stumbling deeper into the building in search of anything he could use and/or sleep on, Malcom moved towards the rooms that likely held the screens, assuming that there’d be some kind of employee access or a cupboard that held a stash of food and water. Cinemas used to be full of snacks, and the health of his meals didn’t matter anymore – he just needed food, drink and rest. Mostly rest. So much rest…

Opening the door into the first screen, he moved to the front of the staggered seats, surprised that the reel was still running after all this time. The Twilight had knocked out almost all technology across the globe, but somebody must have restarted this later and just… left it running? It didn’t matter, nothing made sense these days anyway.

Sighing, he turned away to face the seats.

And found himself struggling to not vomit.

There were at least a hundred people here, of all ages and races. All dead. Decaying. It didn’t seem like any of them had even left their seats, but there was no reason for them to still be here. Surely they would have either been evacuated or left on their own terms, and not died so openly, but it was almost like they had been lined up and executed.

It wasn’t until he got closer that he noticed the scorch marks on their flesh, all lining the same side of their faces. They had been burned at the same time, probably before just after The Twilight hit, but there was no evidence of how, or _why_. The faint smell of cooked meat was still hanging in the air, which he had initially chalked up to the food, and it was making his stomach flip.

It didn’t matter. It was a sign. No matter where he went, no matter how well he fought, they had already lost. He just wanted to sleep. That’s all he needed.

Moving up the rows to get somewhere in the middle, he slid into one of the open seats that weren’t near any of the corpses, his desire to keep looking for things completely gone. It was better this way. Raising his handgun to his head, he took a second to close his eyes and feel the comfort of the stained yet soft chair cushioning. It was almost like being back home, back when the world meant something to him.

Malcom was tired, and Malcom pulled the trigger.


End file.
